This was a difficult year to nail down a top five list because I’ve been watching less anime, but the anime I have watched has all been excellent. Years where I watched a ton of shows allowed the gems to really stand out, but it is much harder to pick out gems among gems.

I wonder why 2013 was a year I watched only a handful of good shows. Am I becoming a better judge or more careful of what media I consume? Was the gap between excellent show and bad show wider this year with no middle of the road shows to buffer the extremes?

Whatever the reason: We got a lot of good anime this year. Here are five you should definitely check out.

5. Attack on Titan

Attack on Titan has the potential to be one of the biggest anime in a long time, mainly because it constantly remains interesting. Every few episodes it tosses in a twist that reinvents the entire show; twists that lesser shows would run with for season long arcs.

It’s exciting, has good characters, a solid premise, and a great pace that makes me want more almost constantly. More importantly: The anime greatly improves on the art of the Manga.

We still have a long way to go before the end but Attack on Titan is a solid first part of the story and I can’t wait for the next season.

The Otakon name has a certain amount of weight associated with it. The name conjures images of a crowded Baltimore bristling with teenagers in cosplay trying to survive an oppressive heat. It brings to mind long lines, crowded hallways, and the biggest celebration of Japanese culture anyone could imagine.

So when I walked into Otakon Vegas on the first day and saw a handful of people milling around the expansive hallways of Planet Hollywood’s convention center my first reaction was doom. No one knew how well the new Vegas counterpart was going to do in its first year but the Otakon name carries with it some weight that, apparently, means nothing on the west coast and did nothing to boost the numbers of what turned out to be a decent first year convention showing.

Maybe I was expecting too much. What Otakon Vegas always was is a way for Otacorp to expand and spend some of its profits to fulfill its mission statement. Being a non-profit company, Otacorp needs to get rid of its excess cash and it decided to do that the only way it knows how: throwing a convention. Otakon Vegas may just be the greatest excuse for a weekend in Sin City ever conceived.

Conformity in anime is a common theme because the nature of the Japanese relationships to family and a structured class system. Even in the most mundane slice of life show having characters refer to elders with a special title creates a ridged class structure that the characters obey. There are some anime that tries to challenge some of the expectations of this class structure. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya challenges many normal anime tropes and structures included that social structure. Haruhi moves in and dominates her shy upperclassmen Mikuru. We rarely see a break in this kind of social structure.

Kill la Kill looks at all forms of conformity common to Japanese animation and gives them a giant middle finger. Our protagonist, Ryuko Matoi, walks into high school on her first day and makes a direct challenge to the social and political structures set in place.

This is first illustrated by her uniform, which she acquires shortly into the first episode and becomes her weapon against the school. The uniforms in Kill la Kill have become a status symbol. Students who are high ranking are giving uniforms that grant them special privileges and powers. Students who have no ranking get a standard bland uniform. Ryuko walking into the school wearing a nonstandard uniform serves as a symbol for her challenge to the authority established at the school. By not wearing a uniform she is rejecting the ranking system the student council has put in place and exists outside the social order.

Fish out of water stories are fairly easy to construct. You take a person and drop them into an unfamiliar situation and then each episode going forward features this character exploring the world they previously knew nothing about. It automatically accomplishes two tasks: giving the audience a compelling world to explore and a character to grow while exploring them. Silver Spoon follows this formula to the letter, and that might be its greatest strength.

The story follows Yugo Hachiken an overachiever at academics but a dispute with his parents convinced him to move to a boarding school as far away as possible. He is accepted to Oezo Agricultural High School where he is surrounded by the children of farmers who already are adept at most of the lessons. At Oezo, normal academics take a backseat to learning how to tend livestock, harvest crops, and all manner of the menial labor of farm life. Hachiken is forced to adopt to his new lifestyle and learn the skills of working on a farm in order to pass High School.

The start of From the New World might be the most unsettling and interesting opening scene in recent memory, on par with Serial Experiments Lain. The quick images of children, blood, chaos quickly shows the start of events that lead to the utopian like society scene in the rest of that first episode. Mystery, irony, and pulling the curtain back to reveal the larger picture are what make From the New World a compelling piece of fiction.

From the New World is about a group of children growing up in a seemingly idealized society based on feudal japan, except with some comforts of a technologically advanced society. We experience and see the world through the eyes of these children as they grow up from middle school aged to adults working as productive members of their community. The main tactic the show employs is using these children to guide the narrative forward. The audience is slowly introduced to the details of the world as these children, who are mostly ignorant of how their society works, grow up and experience the price humanity had to pay for living a peaceful life.

Chūnibyō Demo Koi ga Shitai!, known in English as Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions, is a coming of age love story like so much anime that has come before. But the slight tilt that Chunibyo takes on the formula is placing the main love interest in a period of adolescence known as “Chunibyo” in Japan, where a person begins to believe their own delusions of having magic powers or being from another dimension, or any of a long list of like delusions. Yuta Togashi is a boy who has decided to leave his delusions behind and live a normal life, and to that end goes to a high school far enough away as to guarantee no one who remembers his previous life will attend. On his first day he meets and becomes connected with Rikka Takanashi, who is lost deep in her own delusional world.

The show builds on the relationship between Yuta and Rikka with the tension comes from Yuta being sympathetic to Rikka but wanting to attempt to live a normal life. Yuta ends up helping Rikka set up a club, which he then unintentionally joins, and the two become friends despite Yuta’s constant annoyance at Rikka’s actions. Yuta falls into this trap where he likes Rikka and wants to help her but doesn’t ever want to be too close to her because of the fear of being labeled. The odd part is no one in his class seems to care that much about Rikka being a bit weird, other boys response to his relationship with Rikka is jealousy at getting attention from any girl. It quickly becomes apparent that most of Yuta’s fears are completely his own, created by his own insecurities. That factor plays in and forms the central theme of the show, which is not only to accept who you are but to accept others for who they are. It is a beautiful theme, one often seen in adolescent and adult romances alike but including it with the delusion hook of Chunibyo gives the message all the more power.

Kyoto Animation is known for creating the most popular anime among the serious, hard core Otaku in Japan. It’s hard to believe that they haven’t attempted to create an original work before Tamako Market. They’re success has come from taking already popular work among those handful of hardcore fans and applying their animation ability to it. Tamako Market represents their attempt to apply what they learned from their adaptive works and try to create something without the need of outside licenses.

Tamako Market is about Tamako Kitashirakawa the daughter of a Mochi seller at a shopping district. The show mainly follows Tamako and her family as they go about their lives in the shipping district. The one odd thing the show tosses in is the introduction of Dera, a talking bird who is on a quest to find a bride for the prince of an island nation.

Dera acts as the viewpoint character, and is constantly making comments about the situations he finds himself in. His role goes from being the central focus of the narrative to a sideline character to the normal routines of the Shopping district. The show is structured with a breakneck pace with an entire year taking place during the twelve episode series. The show covers favorite Moe anime tropes, including a valentines and beach episodes but moves far too quick for any structured narrative to develop. Instead the show focus’ in on it’s characters. Tamako herself represents the idealized Moe heroine, always cheerful and always optimistic. The side characters are far more interesting from her eccentric carpenter friend, the rivalry between the two Mochi shops in the district, or the beatnik café owner, their brief moments on the screen spoke miles as to their personalities and their roles in the tight nit community of the shopping district.

Japan being an island nation with a long and rich fishing tradition I’m surprised that fishing hasn’t snuck into more Japanese animation. At least, few anime that have made it over to the United States. Looking at the synopsis, a show focused around fishing didn’t sounds appealing but what I got was less a show about someone fishing but a science fiction adventure with a sweet message of friendship.

The colors in Tsuritama are incredibly vibrant, a fantastic looking show which captures the whimsical nature of Haru, an alien who arrives on Enoshima and befriends the island’s new transplant Yuki. Yuki has moved around with his grandmother and has never had the chance to make friends. Haru immediately latches on, to Yuki’s dismay, to the loaner and recruits him for a task that requires fishing.